Open thread for the Horde with a broken home.

That Atlantic just broke for me about 10 minutes ago, and is still broke. So. Assuming it’s not just me: Here’s a thread!

Standard FYI clause: I generally wait about 2 hours after Ta-Nehisi would typically open a thread (roughly noon, EST, back when such a thing was typical…!), and if none is forthcoming, I put one up here.

baiskeli

dave in texas

The Atlantic’s site can be squirrelly at times. It sometimes crashes my computer at home (although never on my work computer), something that doesn’t happen at any of the other sites I regularly visit.

*New Jersey compensates for its deficiencies by having the best liquor stores anywhere (I am now two bottles of Batavian Arrack and one bottle of Oude Genever richer, plus the $20 VSOP cognac).
*Boston is a lovely city, provided you do not drive except to enter it and leave it.
*You cannot readily buy cheap beer (much less good cheap beer, IE Yuengling) in bars in Boston.
*The houses on the Masschusetts coast north of Boston make it look like it is still inhabited by tasteful, if cheerless, puritans.
*Lobster is a big deal.
*The White Mountains are gorgeous and savage, much as expected.
*Mt Washington is big.
*If you want a beautiful experience, canoe out to one of the remote campsites on lake Umbagog state park in New Hampshire and spend the night.
*Relatedly, loons really do sound freaky.
*Moose are large.
*Vermont and New Hampshire really are yin and Yang, conveniently divided by the Connecticut River.
*Maple Syrup is a big deal.
*Northern NH and Northeastern Maine are eerily like Central WVA in culture and economics.
*The Northern New England Accent is awesome.
*Montpelier Vermont is a lovely town, but really is tiny.
*Relatedly, if you want a good meal in Montpelier, go to Salt, the trendy locavore restaurant.
*West Point is both beautifully situated and depressingly isolated.
*I knew this already, but northeastern PA is depressing (we went back via I-81 rather than going through the NY metro area).
*The Yuengling Brewery does not give tours on Sunday.

Captain_Button

efgoldman

Boston is a lovely city, provided you do not drive except to enter it and leave it.
Coward!You cannot readily buy cheap beer (much less good cheap beer, IE Yuengling) in bars in Boston.
Certainly not in tourist areas. Its out there. I bet baiskeli knows.Northern NH and Northeastern Maine are eerily like Central WVA in culture and economics.
Not quite. They’re very conservative, but mostly in a “leave us the hell alone” kind of way. They typically don’t have a redneck mean streak.Maple Syrup is a big deal.
Yes, yes it is. My wife just came back from visiting her sister near Rutland VT, and brought back a (small, unfortunately) jar of “Maple Walnut Drizzle”, basically walnuts soaked in thick maple syrup. Just, OMG!

-Inhabitants of most of West Virginia are hillbillies, not rednecks — they are highlanders, not lowlanders, and were not nearly so fond of treason during the late War of the Rebellion.
-Inhabitants of central WVA are generally friendly enough, if guarded.
-WVA’s inhabitants are ‘my people’ by marriage, so I am somewhat partial to them.
(Note, Central WVA here refers to the mountainous region west of the Allegheny front but east of the lower plateau to the east; the largest city in this region being Elkins).

LizR

I’ve driven the 84-81 route from New England to Scranton more times than I can count, and I actually couldn’t disagree more about Northeast PA being depressing. I mean, there are definitely depressing things about it (rust belt economy, corruption, racial segregation, voter id laws), but that drive isn’t one of them. Right now I’m doing the Midwest to Scranton drive fairly regularly instead, and I would kill to be doing the New England one instead. NEPA has mountains! And trees! Trees that are reasonably old! Did I mention the mountains? Corn only happens occasionally! It’s possible that things are dry enough there right now that everything just looks brown instead of green or white or spectacular fall colors, which would definitely up the depressing quotient, but, assuming that this summer doesn’t become the new normal due to global warming, that’s really not representative of what the area looks like.

I just wanted The Atlantic to work now that I have an hour of rare and precious down-time in the day! 😦

In related news, vacation apparently makes my brain forget how to work. Like, entirely. It’s not just feeling behind or disconnected at my job. It’s that I sat down to write a brief news post this morning and more-or-less couldn’t remember what order sentences should go in, or how to write a lede. Wow. Vacation makes me stupid. In a good way.

Also ani left us fresh tomatoes on the last day she cat-sit Guybrush and he only knocked two little ones all over the floor. The big yellow ones are unharmed and I am about to slice them up with some fresh mozzarella and an olive oil drizzle. Guybrush also apparently retaliated for our vacation by stealing my pens and markers, because a couple of my dry-erase markers are missing and I stepped on a nice pen in the bedroom, about the exact distance a cat would kick it under the door.

David L

Captain_Button

This reminds me of the novel “The Ice People” by René Barjavel which is about the discovery of survivors of the 900,000 year old civilization of Gondwana which destroyed itself with a doomsday weapon in a war with Enisor.

David L

koolaide

yeah. she’s just sitting on the court (or whatever they call it in fencing…strip?). I was watching the feed of the fight/bout/whatever and her coach was upset about something that happened at the end. either the timing or the way the equipment worked or the scoring or I got no idea…

Nothing beats a very fancy note in a box.
Many decades ago, mrs efgoldman, knowing I really wanted a new pair of speakers that we couldn’t afford. She saved up, keeping it secret. On Xmas day, she gave me a jewelry-sized box with dollhouse-furniture speakers in it, and a bankbook.
I still have both the speakers and mrs efgoldman.

Bob Jones' Neighbor

aaron singer

efgoldman

Ms. Emily, I am a little surprised not to see a reaction post by you to the Mittster’s Israeli super-pander.
While he was there, i understand he pandered from right to left.
“Politics stop at the water’s edge.” Or not.
I never thought I’d see a national candidate as ignorant about foreign policy as Bush the Younger, but Mittster veers dangerously close to the knowledge and verbal shoals of Palin country. Scary.
Mr. Benen has a good take:http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/07/30/13034303-putting-a-value-on-a-people?lite

Captain_Button

Bob Jones' Neighbor

Someone wrote on one blog or another this morning that Romney’s speech sounded like it had been written by Netanyahu’s people. Which, given that Romney’s foreign policy advisers seem solidly from the neocon camp, and some prominent neocons who were GW Bush’s advisers had previously worked for Netanyahu, could actually be the case…

baiskeli

My understanding is that most of the fleshing out is actually material that’s backgrounded in The Hobbit, and mostly told through the appendices. (For example, Gandalf driving The Necromancer out of Mirkwood, and so on.)

I mean. That doesn’t mean for a second I think a full trilogy is a good idea, but on the other hand it does mean more time in Middle-Earth. I dunno. I’m really torn.

JHarper2

I paid money to see Episode 1 of the Star Wars and what I got was Jar Jar Binks. I did not pay money to see eps 2 and 3, watched later on free TV, although neither one all the way through, watched parts at a time to keep down the gag reflex.

wearyvoter

watson42

Now this has me wondering, what would Hobbit supplementary data look like? Electron micrographs of dragon scales? Telomere length in relation to time of exposure to the Ring? Language acquisition by thrushes? Emission spectra of elf-made steel alloys? Hm…

cofax

JHarper2

Today in Oh, Really?
1. Romney says Israel has a higher GDP than Palestine because of their Culture.
a. No mention that anytime something gets going in Palestine it is bombed to S***
b. No mention of massive US subsidies to Israel,
c. But the real Oh Really? is the imputation of the Jewish Culture, it sounds to close to me to Teh Jews are greedy moneygrubbers whose culture is all about money. Now granted that for Romney’s worldview that is a complement, but is truly close to an offensive stereotype. Now as I am neither Israeli or Jewish perhaps this should not ring alarm bells with me, but still it does.

koolaide

I’m not much of a Fatsis fan. I’m a HUGE soccer fan. Solo needs to keep her yap shut during the tournament. But Solo is all about promoting herself and she needs eyeballs for her book that comes out 2 days after the closing ceremonies…

Solo clearly doesn’t realize that’s she’s gotten kid glove treatment from media up to this point. Her own on field miscues in the two games haven’t been pointed out. If she flaps at more crosses, shanks clearances, or makes big gaffe in any of the remaining games, methinks the media will be quick to point it out.

aaron singer

Electronic_Neko

I don’t agree with Fatsis’ paraphrase of the Jenkins article. Basically what Jenkins said is that Chastain’s comments weren’t out of bounds for an announcer and that Hope Solo was complaing about it because a.) she thrives on media attention b). the comment probably stung more than usual because Chastain’s team’s success is constantly hanging over the current women’s team. Fatsis pulled the one gender-specific remark from the article to shore up his argument that women are mean to each other.

socioprof

Today in two-year-olds:
1. Kiddo pooped his undies. I dumped the contents and set the undies aside so that I could (ugh) rinse (blech) them (ick) out. I ran to his room to get clean undies. When I got back, he was rinsing out the soiled pair. Dude–you nor I would have to rinse if you went to the mf’ing toilet!!!
2. At naptime he wears a Pull-Up. Today he insisted that he wear the Princess Pull-Up that my niece left here a while ago. Score one against gendering baby items!!!
3. After he woke up, he wanted to go for a walk and searched the house for his “bookpack” which I find the be the cutest thing. I say “backpack”. His dad says “bookbag”. I guess he’s showing that he won’t play favorites.

socioprof

baiskeli

Well, I guess that we can now start calling him “American anti-colonialist” instead

According to the study, Punch was an indentured servant who tried to escape his servitude in 1640 and for punishment was enslaved for life. This is the first documented case of slavery for life in the colonies and occurred decades before initial slave laws were enacted in Virginia.

baiskeli

Former CNN host T.J. Holmes was pulled over on Monday, and documented the experience over Twitter.

Holmes did not indiciate where he was driving, but tweeted that he was pulled over one mile from his house with two cop cars behind him. He snapped a photograph of a police car in his rear view mirror with the caption “Driving while black ain’t no joke!”
…
Holmes later added that the officer said he “wanted to make sure [Holmes] had insurance on the car.” Holmes commented, “I kid you not.” He then mocked the experience, tweeting that he “managed to avoid jail time” but his “relationship with _____ County police may have been soured a bit.”

dmf

David L

An Op-Ed in the San Diego Union Tribune by openly gay journalist Rex Wockner makes a good point about LGBT identity that the activist classes (and Andrew Sullivan) haven’t seemed to grasp yet:

Not every gay or lesbian person even considers his or her sexual orientation one of the most important pieces of his or her identity. For some, it’s just another thing, like being left-handed, or Episcopalian.

Ian

I don’t know what my Memo of Death has done, but it’s done something. This morning I got a phone call from the Director’s Office asking to confirm my boss’s office number. An hour later they called me again to say that, if things “get out of hand” tomorrow, I should call them right away. Huh.

Ian

watson42

“If things get out of hand” sounds vaguely ominous. Both because the director’s office seems to be expecting something, and because they think (?) that something might get out of hand in your direction?

watson42

Great, volatility on top of everything else? That guy must be an absolute joy to work with. I hope the Memo of Death does some good. In any case, here’s a fist bump in solidarity that you come out of all this unscathed.

Ian

It got better. Bigwigs from the lower-48 showed up today unexpectedly. They’re planning to meet with us throughout the week. They have no idea that my boss’s job is hanging by a thread. And Wednesday we have a big audit. This is fucking crazy.